The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (George Washington Series)

by Newt Gingrich

  “Yes, sir, exactly what is this?” Vincent replied.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Colonel Pleasants had noticed you trailing him, and he decided to do a little stealth himself. Purely patriotic, I must add; he thought you might be covering as a Rebel spy. Otherwise, why your curiosity as to his business and what he was purchasing? Then he saw you go into the White House.”

  “And?”

  “He reported that to me.”

  “But you still allowed me to observe the men of the Fourth Division and even to see the tunnel. Rather foolish if you thought I was a Rebel spy.”

  “But not if you were a spy for the White House.”

  “What?” James tried to put on his best acting ability to act surprised and outraged.

  Vincent laughed softly.

  “My brother was invalided out of the army after Antietam; a good old Hoosier boy, same as me. I was too young to know Mr. Lincoln well, other than to see him about Springfield at times, but my family knew Mr. Lincoln and my brother got a slot as an assistant secretary after he was discharged, working for an old friend of his, Mr. Hay. Ever hear of Hay?”

  Reilly was silent. Of course he had; he was Lincoln’s right-hand man.

  “So I ran a little query up to him, described you, and my brother wrote back.”

  Vincent fished in his breast pocket and drew out a letter.

  “Remembered you well. Says you have been in and out of Lincoln’s personal quarters a number of times. Never listed on the official roster of visitors, which he was required to keep, but on occasion, after you left, the President would confer with Mr. Hay and some interesting orders might fly. Never once, though, was your name entered in any record of meetings with the President.

  “My brother poked around a bit more and it turned out that years ago Mr. Lincoln took you in right after you came over from Ireland. You worked in his office for nearly two years as a janitor and then suddenly a ‘benefactor’ sent you off to a school to be trained as an artist. Then you crop up again with some most flattering sketches of Abe in the ’58 and ’60 campaigns.”

  “I admire the man, no sin in that.”

  He would not let it show that this man’s depth of knowledge of his other life had shaken him a bit. Though he knew with almost complete certainty that Lincoln had helped with his education, it was still something of an embarrassment that he had relied on a charity of a friend to launch his life.

  “And then the day this court convenes an order comes down through the war office granting you access?”

  “Nothing unusual about that,” James said, making a show of nonchalance while taking a long gulp of the single malt and handing it back.

  “I think you have two jobs here, Mr. Reilly, and one of them is most definitely more important than Harper’s Weekly.”

  James tried to force a chuckle as he handed the flask back.

  “And I think you are man enough, that even if cornered as you are now, you would not say a word.”

  James took the flask back, and in a display of Irish bravado drained the rest of it off before handing it back yet again.

  “Anything else?” he asked, even as the Scotch hit his head, making him feel a bit light.

  ‘Would you come with me?”

  “Certainly. Am I under arrest or something?”

  “No, not at all.”

  He led James down a row of rough-hewn cabins, stopping for a moment when they both saw General Ayres standing in the middle of the dusty street, talking with several others, waiting until that group had moved on.

  Vincent opened the door of a cabin which was typical of field army construction; it was ten feet by twelve, with four bunks and no windows, and the air within was stuffy. By the light of a coal oil lamp a couple of officers, jackets off, sat around a small table, not much more than an oversized stool, playing cards. James recognized them as men of Burnside’s staff.

  “How’d it go?” one of them asked, looking up at Vincent.

  “Would you gentlemen please excuse us for a few minutes?” Vincent asked.

  Without comment, the two dropped their cards, had a bit of a squabble for a few seconds as to who owned the dimes and quarters in the middle of the table, and left.

  Vincent watched them leave and then nodded for James to sit down on the far side of the low squat table. Going to his bunk he pulled out a haversack, sat down across from James, opened the canvas bag, which was waterproofed with black tar—standard army issue for an infantry man—reached inside, and pulled out a sheaf of papers and tossed them over.

  “Go ahead, read them.”

  There were a couple of hundred pages and slips of paper. James picked one up, a slip of blue foolscap, the handwriting, in pencil, barely legible. He squinted and Vincent produced a second coal oil lamp, lit it, and set it on the table.

  It was dated 2:00 P.M., July 30th from Headquarters, Army of the Potomac:

  United States Military Telegraph.

  * * *

  The commanding general wishes to know if the crater is still in our hands and if so what actions you are now taking.

  My God, that was when we were running for our lives, he thought, remembering how General Bartlett had shouted for them, especially the black soldiers, to flee while they still could. He recalled a staff officer with Bartlett taking out his pocket watch, only seconds before he would be killed, announcing the time.

  And the commanding general was sending a telegram to Burnside asking if the position was still being held? Damn him, could he not see it with his own eyes?

  “Look at this one,” Vincent whispered, fishing out a sheet of paper and handing it over.

  It was dated 8:00 P.M.; darkness would have already settled; another inquiry from Meade as to whether the crater was “still in our hands.”

  In our hands? If one could say it was filled with dead and wounded, perhaps, then.

  “And here’s another,” Vincent said, handing a sheet over, dated 10:35 P.M., July 31st, with the same inquiry; Burnside had not replied to the telegram of 8:00 P.M.

  “And now this one,” Vincent said, and he all but threw the sheet at James.

  It was dated August 1st, 10:00 A.M. and James felt even more rage. It was a query from Meade demanding to know who had authorized the raising of a flag of truce in front of Ninth Corps position. Meade wrote that requesting a truce rested solely with the commander on the field, that it was a mark of concession of defeat, and then ordered Burnside to immediately lower that flag and resume firing upon the enemy; all this while rescue parties from both sides were beginning to evacuate the wounded and clear the dead for burial.

  James let the paper drop and just looked at Vincent.

  “Why are you showing these to me, and where in hell did you get them?”

  “The second question first,” Vincent replied. He went back to his bunk, got out a half empty quart bottle of the single malt and set it down on the table; James gladly took a drink while sifting through the other papers. There were fragments of telegraphs, memos of requisitions for supplies for the construction of the tunnel and then the blasting of the mine, training orders for the Fourth Division, diagrams of the planned assault after the explosion to seize Blandford Church Hill and Petersburg beyond. Additionally, there were copies of the telegrams that had been fired back and forth between Meade and Burnside throughout that long bloody day and well into the next, while the two were in their individual bunkers less than eight hundred yards apart and both just eight hundred yards from the slaughterground of the crater.

  Vincent took a long pull on the bottle, and it was obvious he was more than a little drunk.

  “Where in hell did you get these?” James asked.

  Vincent laughed and shook his head, offering the bottle. James was tempted but felt he needed to keep his head and refused.

  “Did you know that Meade ordered the arrest of our telegraphy team at the end of the battle?”

  “What?”

  “Yup. Said
they had been privy to private correspondence and were to be placed under arrest, with copies of all papers and notes to be confiscated.

  “Of course, old Ambrose refused to comply, said the men were acting under his orders and merely doing their duty. A couple of provosts were sent down from Meade’s headquarters to bring them in. Oh, that created a bit of a row there for a few minutes.”

  Vincent chuckled and took another sip.

  “Our provosts refused to accept their provosts until they presented proper identification. Of course Ambrose was buying time, while several of us furiously wrote down copies of everything before we finally let those bastards into our command center to scoop everything up and to lead those poor damn telegraphers away. Chances are those lads will at least live out the war, most likely keying telegraphs up in Bangor, Maine.

  “You saw them yesterday, when General Burnside finally went before the Board. He had a satchel full of these papers, which he asked to submit to the board and was refused. That damn weasel Shriver said that submissions of written documentation would take place at the appropriate time and place, and given what he called ‘the sensitive nature’ of personal correspondence involving General Meade which might have a bearing on current operations, copies from Meade would be sufficient after being properly vetted for reasons of military security.”

  Vincent, as if having exhausted himself by that statement, just sighed and sat back in his chair.

  “Those are copies of copies by the way, but I swear to you they are all valid.”

  “Why give them to me?”

  Vincent gave a strange conspiratorial wink.

  “Someone outside the army needs to see them.”

  James looked back down at the papers, pushing them about, picking up one and then another to scan for a few lines, and he felt a rising anger.

  “If you think I am going to hand them to my newspaper you can go to hell,” James snapped. “The last thing we need is for the Rebels to see this.”

  Vincent chuckled softly.

  “If you had said anything different I’d of taken them back by now or put a bullet through your head if you tried to walk out of here with them.”

  “Why not send them yourself to your brother?”

  “A lot can happen to papers being shipped. Someone might get curious as to why a staff officer with Burnside is sending a package to the White House. My brother is only an assistant to an assistant. You know how that could go…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “But if someone was to hand them directly to the President…”

  James reached over and took the bottle and allowed himself the indulgence.

  He gazed straight at Vincent but did not offer a denial.

  “So it is true, you do spy for Lincoln?”

  James looked at him cold-eyed and said nothing.

  “It’s all finished here,” Vincent said, voice slurring. “You saw it today. Oh, sure, the inquiry will go through the motions for the next few weeks, but Meade has spoken and Burnside has followed. Anyone with a lick of sense knows it should have started with the testimony of Colonel Pleasants.”

  “Where is he?”

  Vincent smiled.

  “Ambrose is loyal to his own. He got him the hell out of here, yesterday. The poor naïve fool wanted to tell the truth, and Ambrose knew the order of testimony already. Pleasants would have taken blame as well and the general would not allow that to happen. Besides, what good would his testimony do before a board whose orders were already clearly laid out?

  “It should have started from the bottom up. Regimental commanders like Pleasants, then those brigade commanders who went into the fight and got out of it, especially Siegfried and Thomas, who commanded the colored troops and in with them. Then those bastards Ledlie and Ferrero and that fool Potter, though I will say Wilcox is halfway decent. Then, only at the end of it all, to Burnside and Meade. Instead every single man will take his cue from the top down, the decision already obvious. Burnside, Ninth Corps, and the colored boys will take the blame and that will be the end of it.”

  “That’s obvious, but why give these papers to me?”

  “Let’s stop the game playing, Reilly. I know, now even Burnside knows, who you are.”

  James took another look sip on the bottle.

  “And even if that were true, what will you want of me in exchange?”

  Vincent laughed softly.

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “The outcome is obvious, isn’t it? Ledlie will be drummed out and good riddance to him.”

  “Why did General Burnside ever place his trust in such a man to start with?” James asked. “I was in the crater and saw General Bartlett. By God, if that man had been in command of the division and properly briefed I daresay we could have still won the day. I met him as his brigade was going in, and he was in a fury; he had no idea whatsoever what his orders were, other than a vague notion to seize the crater.

  “Burnside should have briefed him.”

  “Lord knows I love that rather strange man,” Vincent sighed, taking the bottle back from James. “I’ve been with Burnside since New Bern. At times he’s a bloody genius: New Bern, Knoxville, his original plan for this fight … but at other times…”

  He sighed.

  “He seems to become someone else. His mind becomes hesitating, slow, unable to make a decision, as if a fog has wrapped around his brain. You know, they said the same was true of Grant before he was weaned from the bottle, and of McClellan it was definitely true. I was with Burnside at Antietam and all of us were driven half crazy with his obsession to take that one damn bridge when, in fact, the entire creek could have been forded by waves of infantry and have turned Lee’s flank by midday.

  “But any who serve with that man will tell you this: that he is loyal to those who serve him. And maybe that is his curse. More than one of us tried to tell him Ledlie and even Ferrero were poor choices for division command, but he would just give that strange chuckle and say, ‘Let ’em prove themselves first and then we shall see.’”

  Vincent sighed.

  “And he shall be destroyed and hanged.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I keep hearing talk about hangings. We don’t hang generals anymore,” James said.

  Vincent laughed.

  “Rank does have its privileges, though in this case I think it will be more humane. Word is that a strong suggestion will be made that he agree to go home on personal leave. He will go back to Rhode Island, and then when enough time has passed and public attention focused elsewhere, he will be quietly told his services are no longer needed and that a resignation would be appreciated.

  “Ledlie, maybe Ferrero, will be drummed out. There’s no way in hell they can be let off without at least that,” and Vincent’s words were now bitter.

  “And Meade?”

  “Nothing. Of course nothing, though I daresay that henceforth he won’t be able to sneeze without Grant standing over his shoulder with a handkerchief ready.”

  “But why, damn it?”

  “Because we are losing this war,” Vincent snapped. “Yes, things look promising with Sherman, but the election is only three months off. Unless someone pulls a miracle, and at this point it looks like it will have to be Sherman, Lincoln will lose and the opposition will end the conflict and all this sacrifice will be for naught. Drumming out Meade will only shake public confidence still more. Hanging Burnside and his division commanders with the blame will shift attention from where it belongs.”

  “And the men of the Fourth, what of them?” James asked bitterly. “I went in with them.”

  “I know.”

  “I saw their valor and by God above, if they had led the attack, we would be celebrating the end of the war in Richmond this day. We were so close, so damn close…”

  His voice trailed off and he realized he had drunk too much and was on the point of tears of rage and frustration.

  “I know,” Vincent said softly. “And
Burnside knows your feelings on that as well. Reilly, there were a couple of our staff watching you and how you handled their story. Burnside knows how you feel.”

  Reilly said nothing, a bit shamed that here he had thought himself so clever and yet these men had figured it all out.

  “They will take the blame,” Vincent sighed. “You saw the New York Herald. All the papers are trumpeting now that ‘the darkies panicked,’ that the battle was going apace until the ‘colored division was pushed in and triggered a general rout.’”

  “Damn whoever wrote that.”

  “It is now the convenient excuse. This was not a defeat of General Meade and the glorious Army of the Potomac, which, by God, really is a glorious army. Instead it was a defeat of outsiders, of our old Ninth Corps, wanderers from one front to the other, from Vicksburg and Louisiana to North Carolina and Tennessee and now here. Orphans, called in to fill out the ranks for awhile but never really belonging. And now the same is true of the colored. They weren’t really ‘one of us,’ so who could expect anything different?”

  “We could have expected so much more and seen so much more if they had been given their fair chance.”

  Vincent nodded, taking the bottle back from James.

  “Take the papers and share them with that friend of yours. Maybe someday history will tell the truth.”

  “And you? What of you?”

  “Oh, I’m one of the fallen,” Vincent replied. “I’ve been in this war for three years and maybe I’ve seen enough. I’ll go into exile with Burnside. Maybe it’s time I go home, too…”

  He looked down at the papers on the table, as if struggling for control.

  “Maybe someday I’ll feel that I did something right for my country after all.”

  He looked up at James, tears in his eyes.

  “That’s all I ever really wanted to do, Mr. Reilly: to serve my country. And giving these papers to you…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “Please just tell the truth to someone.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  SEPTEMBER 3, 1864